code duello
by Roses of Sharon
Summary: They live by it now, but they didn't always. And they don't always have to. KyoYuya. Drabbles.
1. Series One

Series One;  
partially inspired by my midterms  
because I owe Becca

**1. wanting. (fiftywords)  
**Kyo doesn't love her.

She is foolish and stubborn and stupid and loud, and nothing at all like Sakuya, and she relies on him entirely too much.

And Onime no Kyo can not love.

But if he could… he thinks that maybe, just maybe, he would want to love her.

**2. lonesome. (seventyfivewords)  
**Kyoshiro never takes Yuya to see the cherry trees in Edo, and she hardly wants to go with him anymore, anyways. She belongs with Kyo, now; Kyoshiro belongs in the past.

Kyo never takes her either, and she supposes that it is because Kyoshiro asked her first, and Because of Sakuya-san, and a million other things she does not understand and he will not or can not explain.

So Yuya goes to see them alone.

**3. prayer. (fiftywords)**  
Yuya visits her brother's grave once a month. At least, she used to. She stares at the broad back of the demon-man before her and whispers a prayer to heaven and her brother for forgiveness and tries her best not to cry. She doesn't notice him watching. She never does.

**4. brush. (seventyfivewords)**  
Yuya has dreadful handwriting; handwriting that actually does look a little like chicken scratch, each letter and word and sentence undertaken as a separate endeavor, as though a child had written it. Kyo watches her struggle over the short missive for hours before finally grabbing the brush for himself and transcribing the nearly illegible words to another sheet, sure hand drawing neat, thick lines across the paper. Yuya squawks and tries to retrieve the letter.

**5. mirror. (fiftywords.)**  
Yuya had never really been one to care for her appearance; bounty hunting had taught her how to use it. Kyoshiro had been so susceptible, almost pathetic in it… she wishes, drawing her fingers across the surface of the still pond to erase her image, that Kyo were the same.

**6. Christmas. (fiftywords.)**  
He has never been one for celebrations; watching her on the ice rink, though, with her scarf flowing behind her and music in the air, he can almost feel it: this spirit that everyone else loves. And he almost feels like celebrating with them, before he turns and walks away.

**7. fireworks. (twentyfivewords.)  
**The explosions are only bits of gunpowder and metal, but they are reflected in her upturned face as so much more. Not that he's watching.

**8. firefly. (fiftywords.)  
**Yuya has killed before. She has blood on her hands. Just like the others, just like Kyo. But somehow, watching her chase - oh so slowly, oh so clumsily - after the fireflies, she seems younger, cleaner, more innocent. He looks away before the weight of his gaze crushes her.

**9. first period. (thirtywords.)**  
He stands in the front of the room and stares down at his students, eyes seeming to flash red: frightening, terrifying, horrifying. She has never felt this awake this early.

**10. cafeteria. (thirtywords.)**  
She had never needed friends, before; she always had onee-san and his friends to sit with. Now, scanning the lunchroom, she tries her best to pick someone familiar, and fails.

**11. physics. (fiftywords.)**  
They are building wooden bridges of popsicles and toothpicks, and the little X-acto knife is deathly sharp and a little bit lethal as it slides against the rounded wood, slicing into the skin of her index finger. He looks away before he gives in to the urge to help her.

**12. foreign language. (thirtywords.)**  
The words are strange and heavy on her tongue, as though she is speaking another language: heavy, cumbersome. _Stay_, she cries, inside her mind, and the words do not appear.

**13. chemistry. (fiftywords.)**  
It is not that she is bad at balancing the equations. It is just that his expression as he looks down at her, pulling the pencil from her suddenly lax hand and scribbling the answers in dark lead, is enough to make her forget her pride and let him help.

**14. history. (onethirtyonewords.)**  
There is nothing interesting in learning about Japan; about the Meiji Revolution and about Hiroshima. There really isn't; what's done is done and past and _over_, and she is not in charge of mistakes, and so she cannot remake or unmake them. She takes the class anyways, though, and pretends it is not because she had overheard him talking to the professor last quarter about his interest in Japan's often bloody past, the clashes between samurai and ninja. Some days, as she sits in the back of the class and watches his back, she swears that she will drop it. She is not doing well, anyways, and it is not as though he notices. And then he passes her the papers, and their fingers brush, and she cannot help but continue.

**15. geometry. (twentyfivewords.)**  
She despise the numbers, despises the uncountable theorems and corollaries and shapes. But she never despise her tutor, no matter how often he degrades her.


	2. Series Two

Series Two;  
inspired by the things spread across my desk;  
because I have no life.

**1. Advanced Placement (thirtysix.)  
**He would be accepted in that course. She stares down at the _Honors _scrawled across her class request sheet; very, very smoothly, she scribbles it out and forges _AP _in her teacher's handwriting. They'll never notice.

**2. cookie cutter (fortyseven.)  
**Their love isn't perfect; the edges aren't nice and neat and straight, and the icing isn't smooth, and there _are _no sprinkles (except maybe one or two accidentally dropped on the edges). But she's never been perfect, either. So it will be enough, for her; for him.

**3. hello kitty (fiftythree.)**  
There is a cat that lives in the alley in the town they are staying the day at; it is thin and it is tired, but it stares at her with yellow eyes, lethal and wary. She loves it on sight, and the first time she reaches out to it, it scratches her.

**4. snoopy (seventyeight.)**  
Yuya doesn't like dogs; they are too _simple_, she thinks. It is a terrible thing to think, but it is true. There is no challenge in getting a dog to love you. You do not have to work to gain its trust, little by little. It loves you on sight; reassuring at time, depressing at others. Cats, she believes, are the truly beautiful animals. They require love and dedication, loyalty and _time_. And she can give them that.

**5. chococat (fortyseven.)**  
Yuya has always wanted a cat. Every town they pass through, she watches the pet stores and the alleys, searching for the perfect one. It is not until a long, long time later that she begins to look at what has been before her the entire time.

**6. aqua pod (thirtytwo.)**  
She collects lids for a second grade boy who needs dialysis, and leaves a box with the soccer team for after games. He is always the one to return it to her.

**7. butterfly (sixtyfive.)  
**She always used to try to catch them; her pudgy little fingers crushing flower petals moments after the butterfly had left, snatching at air that had, so short a while ago, been occupied. Her brother tells her, though, that butterflies are delicate. Are fragile. That they will break if touched; that she will weigh them down and stop them from flying. She never believed him.

**8. ribbon (sixtynine.)  
**The ribbon in her hair is long and frayed at the ends; an odd shade of green, somewhere between puce and emerald, with the better qualities of neither. She carries it religiously, though, in her bag, if not in her hair. He never asks her where it's from, because he was there when it was given to her. _Kyoshiro_, he snarls, mentally, but never asks her to remove it.

**9. workbook (fortynine.)**  
He passes hers down the row to her, and for a minute she considers brushing her fingers against his - just to know what his skin feels like against hers. She doesn't though, and takes the workbook demurely from him, fingertips carefully on the opposite side of the book.

**10. flashlight (fortyfour.)**  
The ball of light bounces before her, and she reaches out to it with trembling fingers from her position on the ground. _Tired_, she moans, and then he is there, words as harsh as ever, arms gentle as he lifts her from the ground.

**11. cookie (seventyfive.)**  
Yuya can cook, surprisingly enough. It is her one feminine trait, her one redeeming skill as a wife. (Being able to shoot and kill and fight and run _forever _isn't enough, apparently.) She never has time anymore, for fancy food and fun dishes, only for noodles and onigiri and such, but she dreams, still, of the feeling of dough under her nails and watching them bake and crack and smelling them, fresh from the oven.

**12. coupon (fortyeight.)**  
When she was younger, her mother always set her to snipping coupons out of the magazines and newspapers, teaching her to read through memorization of symbols and words and letters. Now, she does it for herself, staring fastidiously down at the papers rather than across the empty table.

**13. valentine's (seventytwo.)**  
Every year, she makes him a card. She doesn't know why, but she does. She can't help it; like, clockwork, the week before Valentine's Day, she digs out the paper cutters and scissors and lace, the tissue paper and the construction paper and the ribbons, and she makes him a card - every year more elaborate than the rest. She hopes that, someday, she will be able to give them to him.

**14. card (thirtyone.)**  
She will never look twenty-one; she is too slender and too long-legged, too short and small. But they never ask her for her identification at the bar she frequents, sitting on the stool and staring out at the crowd. _Onime no Kyo_, the sign reads out front.

**15. magazine (sixtysix.)**  
She always carries one or two around: cooking magazines and fashion magazines and news magazines and sports magazines, brightly colored, with pictures and large, elaborate fonts splashed across the front. Every day, she has a different one, from the same kiosk. She tells herself she does not buy it because she finds the salesman cute. She is furthering her education, one inane magazine at a time.


End file.
